More thoughts to ‘paws’ over when it comes to felines. Knowing where you stand can sometimes suck! As much as I don’t like to be lied to, and I appreciate honesty, sometimes when you are on the receiving end of being schooled by a four legged family member, it is exasperating and down right annoying! Believe me, I have been tried and tested over and over by some felines that I love deeply, but it just isn’t endearing when it happens! When we moved to Thunder Bay we left our two cats for ten days, I had someone coming into the house to feed and clean the litter boxes, but neither one liked being “left” behind while the rest of us took off to visit family. Much to my dismay, when we returned I realized that the carpet in our dining room had become the new litter box, argh! (If I am being honest, carpets have NO place in a room where my family ate food on a daily basis anyway, so perhaps the cat urine was an usual gift to help nudge us in the direction to replacing the floors). I was angry, my spouse even more so! After months of trying to solve the issue we realized we were out matched and out witted, we ripped all the carpeting out, took us awhile to be able to afford to fix the issue, but we learned that we needed to come up with a better solution for caring for our cats when we went away. When Samantha and Holly passed on, we adopted two cats from a local rescue called “Kitty Kare” a wonderful organization!! Romeo was our first, Savannah was second to join our household. It was a rough go for us all, she didn’t seem to like us and was rather unhappy about her new home, but we persisted. I have always been of the mind, when you adopt an animal you make a commitment, you have made a promise to take care of that animals welfare, you can’t jump ship just because the water gets choppy! It was a tough go, and to be honest, after a lot of stress Savannah went to live with my older daughter when she moved out. When Kailey comes to visit, so do her fur babies, so Savvy has to try and acquiesce and get along, but I am not sure that the “water is under the bridge” for her! I will say I have spent a lot of time trying to get into her good graces, to right whatever wrong’s she feels she has suffered through! For Pete’s sake, I am trying and yet, every visit she will become disgruntled, which will result in her peeing on some piece of furniture in my house! I was out at a concert recently and came home and she had urinated on my side of the bed, saturating my new comforter and decorator pillows. There is nothing more infuriating at 10:45 in the evening than to have to strip ones bed and scrub things down. Perhaps, earlier on in the day I vacuumed and disturbed her peace, I have no clue what the precipitating factor is half the time…I just can’t win. And now she is acting out at her own household, if Savvy is annoyed she lets you know! If I am trying to convince people that cats are worth loving I am not doing a wonderful job! I don’t trust her and she is obviously unhappy and feels there is only one way to express her anger. As a family, we have had discussions about “what to do” and I would be lying if I didn’t admit we have talked about finding her a new home or euthanizing her, but no matter how many times we circle around the unsettling issue, we always come back to the fact that we made a commitment to her! What to do, what to do? So far our line of defense is to close all the bedroom doors, protect the couches and pray she won’t find a new way to express her dissatisfaction! We know where we stand, but it comes at a price and it stinks!! We are not giving up, we will continue to show her love and hope that one day she trusts the sincerity of that expression…heck, I may even be guilty of giving her a little spoonful of whip cream or an extra teaspoon of wet food now and then to attempt to get into her good graces! Cats are strong willed and aren’t afraid of expressing themselves! It may seem a little passive aggressive at times, but it is honest and provides us mere mortals with pause for thought. When you know better, you do better, I hope we can muddle through and figure out how to make Miss Savvy a happy cat! We aren’t going to send her packing or put her down. Yesterday I said that I applaud cats for being forth right and knowing where you stand with them, some days that can truly be a challenge! Felines can be overt in expressing themselves…when it comes to little miss I am going to choose to respond by exercising patience, remain hopeful and see if that gets me anywhere!
No Time To Paws 